Seeing Dark
by DevilishSophistication
Summary: Seeing Dark is a short story based off of the poem "The Gut of Evil" by Mikhaila Mashif, a Russian author.


Seeing Dark

**Part One: The Happening**

Jennison Carter sat alone in her apartment, waiting for her brother to come home. He was late, which was nothing unusual, but she really hoped he wouldn't be too much longer. Something was happening tonight, she knew it. She just had a bad feeling about, well, everything. She curled into an even tighter ball on the couch as a wave of pain ran up her spine and settled in her skull to give her a five second eye-tearing migraine before it was gone just as quickly as it had come. She brushed her short, light brown hair behind her ear and wrinkled her short nose, fighting off an itch. She had a short, round face with small, pointy features. Her thin eyes were constantly darting about behind round wire glasses and her stout body was always slightly hunched over. She wasn't attractive, she knew that, but she wasn't quite ugly either.

_Oh, George_, She thought. _What's keeping you out so late?_

She let her eyes wander to the window again, and screamed. The haunting face, the jaw hanging limply and the torn hands clawing at the glass pane as a noise like a steaming kettle issued itself from the demon's throat. Quickly uncurling herself she lost balance and fell to the floor. When she looked at the window again, nothing was there. She was alone with the full moon and the silent night. Nothing was there, she told herself again and again. Nothing was there, you're just scaring yourself.

Maybe if she made some tea she would feel better. She pulled herself up off the floor and slowly walked into the kitchen, her fingertip's grazed the counter as she looked around at the battered old cabinets and cupboards. Her hand wrapped around the handle of a particularly high-up cabinet, she hesitated, feeling like someone was standing near. She turned, still holding the cabinet handle. Nobody was there. She told herself she was being ridiculous, opened the cabinet and turned back to face it again.

"Jennison, Jennison please don't go! I promise I'll never hurt you again!" Jennison fell back onto the floor, screaming again. A black creature with six long, thin, spider-like legs crawled out of the cabinet. Its body was like that of a mosquito's or a wasp's, but entirely black and covered in scales. A thick slimy substance dripped off of the scales and while the long structural face leaned forward. The creature flicked its long spiny tail forwards, wrapping it around Jennison's neck.

"Come back, Jennison! My darling child, I'm so sorry! I never mean to hurt you!" The creature's mouth would open as if it was trying to scream but all that came out was the voice of Jennison's father, pleading for her. This wasn't happening, her fears, her darkest nightmares; everything was coming to life before her eyes.

"No! Go away, you're not real! Get away from me!" Jennison cried out, trying to unwrap the rough tail from around her neck as it slowly tightened and cut into her skin. A tea-kettle noise came from the main room, accompanied by the eerie clawing of the half-deceased man again. She screamed and sobbed as she fought to pull the creature off of her. It wouldn't stop crying out with her father's voice and tightening its deathly hold on her throat. But no matter how hard it squeezed, she could breathe fine. She could feel the pain of the shark-like skin digging into her own, but she could breathe as if it wasn't even there.

More creatures poured out of the cabinet, all a variety of sizes but looking exactly the same as the first. She heard everyone she loved, screaming her name, begging her to come back. They screeched and sobbed for her, as they crawled over her and tore her apart.

A shattering of glass sounded from the other room, and a black mist drifted in with the walking corpse, its pale rotting flesh falling apart and leaving a trail behind him. The mist swirled and twisted, then it seemed to intensify and become denser before it pulled itself into a solid ball of pure darkness and hovered above her terrified self.

The pain, oh the pain! It was terrible, the most agonizing thing she had ever felt. The feeling of the tiny dagger claws at the end of each creature's leg digging into her flesh and pulling her apart. She screamed and thrashed and tried to fight them off but it was no use, they were literally pulling her to bits. As she fought and shrieked she kept an eye on the black ball above her. Just as she was looking away from it, to attempt to fight off the undead demon, a tendril of smoke came out of the side, it squirmed around in the air for a moment, before turning and coming towards her. The smoke came for what seemed like years, but must have been only seconds. She tried to spit it out but the inky gas went straight into her mouth and she could feel it inside of her, floundering around seemingly without direction.

She was tired of fighting, of the fear and the agony, why couldn't these hellions just kill her and end the torture? The smoke began to retreat from her body, and she came with it. Suddenly she was above the ground, floating in the dark smog and calmly watching her body be devoured by these rogues. Why was she calm? Why couldn't she panic and shout and put up a fight when she so desperately wanted to?

"Jen? Jenni? Oh my god! Jennison! Jennison!" One of the creatures leaped from her body to the counter, screaming this at her. It was George's voice. Droplets of blood flew from its mouth and into the air as it bayed out the call. Slowly the call became fainter and fainter until, everything was black.

**Part Two: The Explanation**

"Jennison?" A shadow leaned over her, blocking the bright fluorescent lights from her burning eyes. "Oh, thank god! She's awake!"

"Oh my, let me see her!" Another shadow broke through the brightness, this one had a much shriller voice. Jennison slowly opened her quivering eyes, blinking and looking around cautiously. Her brother and her mother were leaning over her with broad smiles on their faces. She gasped and raised her hands to shield her face from the monsters that were soon to come.

"Jenni? Are you okay? It's me, George." Her brother pulled her hands away from her face, someone clicked a button that pushed the back of her bed up so she was sitting upright. Unlike her own, his face was longer and always looked very solemn and forlorn, as if he was attending a funeral of and old friend. His bushy brown eyebrows were raised in anticipation as his dark brown eyes watched her carefully. The little hair he had left growing around his crown was terribly messy, as if he had been scratching his head like he did when he was worried.

"Where am I? How am I alive?" She asked, taking her hands back from George and looking at them, absolutely dumbfounded by the fact that she wasn't six feet under.

"You had a tumor in your brain, it was making you hallucinate, sweetie." Ms. Carter said, she smelled of cigarettes and cheap perfume. "The surgeons took it out, you're okay now." Ms. Carter raffled through her purse, Jennison could see the hairspray, lipstick, and dozens of other beauty products her mother toted around with her. She paused to flick a lint ball off of her dark purple blazer and to push a stray strand of fake blonde hair out of her round mousey face. She looked much more like Jennison than George.

"Hallucinate? I was hallucinating." Jennison sounded like she didn't quite believe them.

"I came home and you were rolling about and screaming your head off on the kitchen floor. You tried to beat me to death then you suddenly went still. It was the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen, Jenni. It was like you had no life left in you. I called 911 and they sent an ambulance over immediately." George explained.

"Anyway, what did you see that made you so insane, darling?" Her mother pulled out a pack of Marlboro's and a lighter.

"Ma'am, no smoking in the hospital." said a nurse who stood checking Jennison's IV drips. She pulled out a syringe and injected to contents into one IV. "You'll be asleep soon, hon." She whispered just to Jennison.

"Oh, come on! What's the big deal?" Ms. Carter waved the lighter around as if it made her more convincing.

"It's a rule." The nurse came and took the Marlboro's then quickly left.

"Well that was rude. So, Jenni, darling, What did you see?"

Jennison's hand flew to her throat at the mere memory of it, her eyes went wide and a small squeak came out of her mouth.

"Mother," George said, placing a comforting hand on Jennison's arm "I don't think she wants to talk about it." Jennison took a few deep breaths and gave her brother a weak smile. She wouldn't talk about it; she never even wanted to think about it again.

"Never again." She said to the air around her before peacefully drifting off into a medicated slumber.


End file.
